Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Last night I had the strangest blog....

A dream I had the other night.Dick Cheney was at a beach party, in bathing suit and sweat shirt, hair wet, sitting casually on the ground, legs beneath him leaning on one hand, gesturing with the other. He was animated, smiling, charming. There was a gaggle of young people listening to him attentively.

I stood on the sidelines, having recognized him, and curious as to what he was saying.

Then he addressed himself to me: “What do you think, Merle, I know that you have written about this in the past.”

I was both flattered and frightened by this, that he was familiar with my work.

I drew into the circle, and started engaging him in a battle of wits. This being a dream, however, the form of wit was there, but the content was not. We were saying things to each other like, “Oh yeah, YOU do it.” “No YOU, it was your idea.” “Get out of here.” “YOU get out of here,” etc.

Suddenly, we wound up being friends. I sat next to him. He laid his damp head on my shoulder, and took a little nap.

John and Kate Plus EightThis show is on my ever-growing list of things I do not give two whats about, but it’s been attracting a lot of attention, especially in Christian circles. I gather that the couple, who have sextuplets and a set of twins, have professed to be Christians, but are now in danger of separating. This has put many fans in a tizzy. A marriage counsellor, writing on the Christian site, her.meneutics, wrote: “Let’s be honest: Women, in Kate’s situation, how many of us would have chosen a submissive spirit as our primary mode of relating to our husband? Men, in Jon’s shoes, would you be waking up daily wondering how you can love your wife as much as you love your own flesh? Probably not.” I have discussed this briefly, with the Child Bride. I said, “I love you as much as my own flesh.” She said, “That’s not saying much. You’re almost sixty years old.” I said, “Will you submit, woman?” She said, “Submit this,” and showed me a finger.

And I have watched this show, briefly, with My Dreaded Other. She sort of likes this sort of thing. My feeling about this sort of thing is: if I’m going to watch a show about assholes, some of them better have loaded weapons, and know how to use them. In the snippet I watched, in which John and Kate were interviewed separately, whiny unpleasant John and whiny unpleasant Kate both blamed their problems (whatever the hell they are) on the intrusive media. This, despite the fact that they have their own television show, in which they invite the world to watch them in their largely-ignored (except by the camera) gaggle of whelps. If you don’t want the world to watch you, don’t have eight children, unless you’re from Utah. That’s the message I’m getting.

My favorite scold, Brent Bozell III, on the show“The back story was charming. Kate had fertility treatments, but refused to ‘selectively reduce’ (yet another euphemism for abortion) any of six babies for the sake of convenience. Jon's employer, the lout, laid him off because he didn't want the insurance burden. Jon and Kate instantly were very sympathetic figures facing a very real, human challenge — and serious hardship — with pluck and devotion. The show caught on enough to be "promoted" to TLC. That led to spinoff books and speeches, where the Gosselins were more candid about their Christian faith than they were on TV.”

By the way, according to the Wee Wife, Jon was allegedly not laid off because of the insurance burden. He was laid off, allegedly, because he didn’t do any work, but spent all his time trolling the Web for freebies. Back to Brent!

“But within two years, as the show became TLC's top attraction, the temptations of fame and materialism began seeping in. Companies from Whirlpool to The Gap were placing their products on the show, so much so that Nielsen ranked this series in the top 10 product-placing shows on cable TV. Both parents got their teeth whitened, and Jon got a free hair transplant. Soon they were showing up on OPRAH and GOOD MORNING AMERICA.”

And this is where we came in…

Speaking of euphemisms for abortion….“Abortion doctor” George Tiller was shot to death in Kansas City on Sunday. The left, in its infinite wisdom, blames Bill O’Reilly. Call me conservative, but I blame the shooter.

ConanI loved the whole opening sequence of Conan O’Brian dashing across America to get to Los Angeles for the premiere of the TONIGHT SHOW (with Conan O’Brian). He looked great in that dark suit, his long legs pumping, like a determined young man on a mission. It was poetic. Artistic. And I loved that he had to stop for a while in Utah to look at Victorian dolls.

Neo-Morning in AmericaI’ve been trying, really I have, to feel that New Morning in America zest and tang. I’m not even sure what we’re calling this non-evident but hoped-for paradigm shift. I’ve heard New Foundation, Hope You Can Believe In (as opposed to what? Hope You Can Doubt?). As near as I can see, we have certainly rolled up our sleeves and are in the process of dumping several years’ worth of the biggest cultural load I have seen in my lifetime. But, as part of that same process, we seem to be acquiring a different load.

President Obama has vowed to bring “transparency” to his administration. This is one of those words that irritate me. So-called transparency rarely even achieves translucence; more often it just achieves a different kind of murk.

Reverse racism.What the hell does this even MEAN?

Another dreamMy tiny wife and I were in a motor court, somewhere in the midwest. Our cabin was stuffed with things, mostly useless, and I was trying to organize it all for our trip back home. My wife wasn’t there. She was off doing a series of chores.

A woman and two children came to the door, with boxes of food and plastic army men, intended for us, as a kind of care package, I guess. I was looking through the boxes, examining the army men, ignoring the food, as the woman talked.

My wife had made these little stick tripods in the courtyard, designed to help plants climb. The woman said her grandmother used to make tripods like that. She called them “sugar towers.”

She then asked me if the Clintons were still out with Rita. (I don’t know who Rita was; apparently some kind of wheel in the area; I don’t know why we were with the Clintons; until the woman had brought it up it was news to me.) I told her the Clintons were big in Iowa.

Then I started packing the van with stuff. The van had a habit of starting and going by itself. So I kept having to hop into the front seat, to turn off the van before it ran into something.

Sugar TowersOver the weekend, the Propagatrix and I put up some sticks bound with twine for plants to grow on. From now on, these structures will be officially known as “Sugar Towers.” And thus our dreams infect reality. Thank you, Philip K. Dick! Thanks for nothing!

One of my favorite obsessions…NYT: “Profiled in the documentary TRANSCENDENT MAN, which had its premier last month at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and with his own Singularity movie due later this year, Dr. Kurzweil has become a one-man marketing machine for the concept of post-humanism. He is the co-founder of Singularity University, a school supported by Google that will open in June with a grand goal — to ‘assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.’”

The Singularity, for those who don’t know, is the moment when machines surpass humans, and we are either subsumed and/or conquered (THE MATRIX, TERMINATOR), or become as one with the machine: our consciousnesses transferred into sturdy ABS plastic containers, we become immortal. It’s the geek Rapture. It’s one of those stupid ideas with which very intelligent people become enamored, possibly because they would prefer to live in their own heads, and would rather lose their itchy balls altogether, than face the complication of scratching them. Oh, and they don’t want to die.

My personal feeling? Everything’s going to crash, and we’ll be forced to use our useless iPods to hack furrows in cracked dirt, just to plant the turnips essential for our continued survival. Do cyborgs eat turnips? Wait a minute… do androids dream of electric sheep? Damn you, Philip K. Dick!